A yard sale lured passersby to Melissa Geraghty’s house in Everett last weekend.
Carting off their used finds, shoppers may have thought Geraghty’s family was just cleaning house and settling in for the school year.
It’s a reasonable assumption. Melissa and John Geraghty have two daughters, ages 6 and 8, who’ve been Whittier Elementary students. Melissa Geraghty likes her job as executive assistant to Steve Klein, general manager of the Snohomish County PUD. They love their north Everett neighborhood.
They would happily stay put — if not for an offer too good to refuse.
On Sept. 14, Melissa Geraghty will start a new job. She’s been hired as executive assistant to Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke.
“I’ll have a desk outside his office,” said Geraghty, 42. The U.S. Department of Commerce is housed in the Herbert C. Hoover Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C.
That’s a heady change of address, but it won’t be her first time working for Locke, who was Washington’s governor between 1997 and 2005.
Before coming to the PUD, she was Locke’s executive assistant when the former governor and onetime King County executive was at the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLC. Locke was a partner in the firm’s Seattle office from 2005 until early this year.
On Feb. 25, President Barack Obama nominated Locke as a Cabinet member. In announcing his choice, Obama said “I’m grateful he’s agreed to leave one Washington for another.” How hard was it for Geraghty to choose that other Washington?
“We thought about it for a week,” she said. Locke called several weeks ago, she said. His executive assistant was retiring after years at the department. Geraghty said Locke told her he’d interviewed many candidates, and that if she wanted the position it was hers.
“We’re so happy here,” she said. A major reason she came to the PUD was to end her Seattle commute and work close to home. “This is a huge move,” she said.
Still, how could she turn down a chance to assist a Cabinet member?
“I respect him so much,” she said. Locke, she said, “is a family man, a kind man. He is very hard-working, so intelligent and with such integrity.”
Her husband’s enthusiasm for the move was key. “He was all for it,” Geraghty said. John Geraghty worked for the Microsoft Corp. before they had children. He now stays home with their daughters. They’ll live in a condominium in Virginia, and Geraghty expects their girls will attend public schools. Her husband, she said, won’t look for work in the D.C. area until the children are settled.
They’ll keep their Everett home, renting it out except for an apartment on the lower level. That will give them homes on both coasts.
Geraghty didn’t disclose her new salary, nor what she earns at the PUD. “I did get a raise,” she said.
“Knowing her, she’s not doing this for the money,” said Klein, the PUD’s general manager. “We’re so proud of her, the fact that she’s so courageous to uproot and go back there. She’s going to be part of history in the making.” Calling her departure “bittersweet,” Klein said “Melissa is the kind of person, from the moment they join an organization and you meet them, they fit in.”
With the PUD’s involvement in energy industry issues, Klein added, it won’t hurt to know someone in the Commerce Department. “Gary Locke is a great guy. I’m sure Melissa will be a great help to him,” Klein said.
A University of Washington graduate with an English degree and teaching credentials, Geraghty discovered early on that the classroom wasn’t for her. Before working for Locke, she worked at the Seattle law firm of Appel &Glueck, P.C.
She’s not nervous about the change, not with her corporate experience and knowing her new boss. “I do need more suits,” she said. Her children have other priorities.
“The kids are very excited to go to the National Zoo,” Geraghty said. “They have pandas.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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